med Harry, "nor even believe it if
I told him."

"He will believe _me_," said the other, composedly. "You must bring him
here that I may tell him. Your Solomon must be a fool indeed not to
hearken when a mother warns him against her own son. Mind, I do not
blame my Richard, woman!" continued Mrs. Yorke, with sudden passion; "he
has had provocation enough; it is but right to kill such vermin, and I
could stand by and smile to see him do it. But they must be kept apart,
I say--this man and Richard--lest a worse thing befall him than has
happened already."

"Never to see him more!" moaned Harry, covering her face with her hands;
"never to tell him I was not the wretch I seemed! only to fear him as an
enemy to me and mine--"

"Ay, and to himself," interrupted the other, gravely. "If you would not
inflict far more on him than you have done already; if you would not--as
you will, if you neglect my warning--designedly bring him to a shameful
death, as you have involuntarily doomed him to a shameful life, keep
these two men apart. If you love this son of yours, remove him from the
reach of mine."

"Great Heaven!" cried Harry, shuddering, "would he harm my boy--my
innocent boy?"

"Ay, as he would set his heel upon his father--the viper and his brood.
It is no idle menace he has breathed so cautiously that the whisper
might well escape even another ear than mine, in every letter for these
many years. He thirsts for liberty, not for his own sake, but for the
slow-ripening vengeance it shall bear. He will have it, unless we save
him from himself by saving them from him, as sure as yonder inky cloud
will fall in storm. The thought of it was full grown in his mind when he
wrote from Cross Key: '_They are dead to me, those three, at present_,'
and forbade me ever to mention them by name; and since then he has
thought of nothing else. The day of retribution is about to dawn. I say
again, beware of him."

"But he must be mad to cherish--"

"Perhaps he is," interrupted the old woman, coldly; "he will not be less
dangerous on that account to those who made him mad."

There was a long silence. Then Harry, in submissive tones, inquired what
Mrs. Yorke would have her do.

"Bring your husband hither," returned she. "Take the rooms up stairs,
and leave the task of telling him his peril to me: the sooner it is done
the better. There is but a year at most--not much too long to sell his
goods, and get him away across the world, erasin